On Friday, the Bureau of Labor Statistics released official jobs data for Texas and, as my colleague Chuck DeVore pointed out in an earlier post, there was plenty of good news for jobseekers-Texas added 13,200 net new jobs in April, added 225,800 net new jobs over the year, and saw its unemployment rate fall to 6.9 percent.
What’s even more interesting about that last data point is the fact that not only is Texas’ unemployment rate far lower than the U.S. as a whole-TX: 6.9 percent vs. U.S.: 8.1 percent-and it’s been outperforming the national average for a very long time.
For the past 64 consecutive months or nearly five and a half years, Texas’ unemployment rate has been at or below the national average. The last time that Texas’ unemployment rate was above the national average was December 2006.
Admittedly, the state’s unemployment rate is still higher than many would care to see, but with a track record like this unfolding, Texas is clearly doing a lot of things right.
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